zakim:
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has denied being a corrupt person, a label that was created in the wake of a political tussle between him and former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Atiku made this known in an interview with some officials from the media team of the EFCC, published in the latest edition of the anti-graft agency’s Zero Tolerance Magazine.

Responding to a question on how allegations of corruption became his albatross in the race for the presidency in 2006, he said: “well if Atiku is corrupt, he would have been found guilty of corruption by all the panels and probes and cases brought before courts.”

He said: “I remember the only corruption indictment against me was a white paper which was cooked up by our own administration over night to including the very EFCC that I helped found and other cabinet ministers, which I challenged in court.”

He said: “the court rightly dismissed all those indictments as being mere political; and till today nobody has ever indicted me of corruption.”

Also responding to allegations of corruption leveled against him by the Governor of Kaduna State, el-Rufai’s in his book Accidental Public Servant, Atiku said el-Rufai did not give any evidence or prove where I was corrupt.

He added that: “this is the same el-Rufai and others who incorporated Transcorp during my time as Vice President and offered me shares and I declined.”

“I wrote to them officially to say it was unethical of me to have accepted those offers, so, where is the corruption toga coming from.” He said.

Asked to explain the bribe scandal of N50 million, involving Senator Ibrahim Mantu, Jonathan Zwingina and others during el-Rufai ministerial confirmation screening, Atiku said: “No, that is absolutely not true.”

Atiku noted that el-Rufai ran to him and complained that he was denied confirmation by the Senate, adding that he called Mantu and others and confronted them.

He said: “It is also on record, because I controlled campaign funds, every Senator benefited from those funds; and el-Rufai now went and said those campaign funds were meant to be bribe.”

He said: “of course my boss, the president, investigated the story and found out that indeed every Senator got contributions from the campaign fund which I was managing. So where is the corruption in that?”

Read more at http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/general/-i-am-not-corrupt-atiku-tells-efcc/171639.html#7xw5PbMBx3tvQ7UV.99

Ex-Congressman William Jefferson sentenced to 13 years in freezer cash bribe case in Louisiana

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Former Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) walks with his wife Andrea Jefferson as he arrives at US District Court for his sentencing hearing in Alexandria, Virginia.
Former Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) walks with his wife Andrea Jefferson as he arrives at US District Court for his sentencing hearing in Alexandria, Virginia. (Wilson/Getty)
BY
The Associated Press
Friday, November 13, 2009, 11:23 PM

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A former Louisiana congressman who famously hid $90,000 cash in his freezer was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison for taking bribes, the longest term ever imposed on a congressman for bribery charges.

William Jefferson, a Democrat who represented parts of New Orleans for nearly 20 years, was convicted in August of taking roughly $500,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.

The sentence was still far less than the nearly 30 years prosecutors had sought.

Agents investigating the case found $90,000 wrapped in foil and hidden in boxes of frozen pie crusts in his freezer.

Prosecutors had asked a judge to follow federal guidelines and sentence him to at least 27 years, though the judge determined Friday that the sentencing guidelines should have been calculated at 22 years instead of 27. The defense asked for less than 10 years, arguing a stiffer sentence would be far longer than those imposed on congressmen convicted of similar crimes in recent years, none of whom was sentenced to more than a decade.

Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., for example, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty in 2005 to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for taking bribes from lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, served a 7-year sentence after being convicted in a 2002 trial of bribery and racketeering.

Prosecutor Mark Lytle said that, had Jefferson's schemes come to full fruition, he stood to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in 11 separate bribery schemes.

"His activity represented the most extensive and pervasive pattern of corruption in the history of Congress," Lytle said.

Jefferson's lawyer, Robert Trout, said that while his client acknowledged a level of responsibility for his conduct, he also believed that he was operating within the law. And he urged the judge to consider the fact that Jefferson lifted himself up from poverty to become the first African-American to represent Louisiana in Congress since Reconstruction.

"He has led an extraordinary life," Trout said.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said he did take Jefferson's life history into account but that public corruption must be dealt with severely.

"Public corruption is a cancer on the body politic," said Ellis, who lamented that so many other congressmen have been convicted on similar charges. "There must be some sort of greed virus that attacks those in power."

Jefferson said nothing in court after he was sentenced — Trout said he advised Jefferson not to speak because Jefferson is challenging his conviction in appellate court.

When sentenced, the laconic Jefferson showed no visible reaction to the verdict, nor did his wife and five adult daughters who attended the hearing.

Two of the jurors who convicted Jefferson attended the hearing as well, one of whom fought back tears throughout the three-hour hearing. Both declined comment.

Jefferson was allowed to remain free pending a hearing next week. Prosecutors want him to begin serving his sentence immediately, while the defense wants Jefferson to remain free while he appeals his conviction.

Jefferson was also ordered to forfeit roughly $470,000 in bribery proceeds — the government expects to seize Jefferson's retirement savings and other assets to enforce the judgment. Jefferson, meanwhile, has filed for bankruptcy protection and his wife is claiming rights to some of those assets.

Because he was sentenced to more than 10 years, he needs a special waiver from the judge to be allowed to serve his time in a low-security prison camp. Ellis agreed to recommend a waiver, but it will be up to the Bureau of Prisons to decide where Jefferson serves his time.

Jefferson was convicted in August of 11 counts, including bribery and racketeering, and acquitted on five others, including the one most closely associated with the money in his freezer.

[b]The investigation started in March 2005. In August of that year, FBI agents searched Jefferson's Washington home and found the cash. Prosecutors said he had planned to use the money to pay a bribe to the then-vice president of Nigeria to secure a multimillion-dollar telecommunications deal there, an accusation Jefferson denied.

The money ended up in the freezer after a disgruntled businesswoman, Lori Mody, agreed to wear a wire after telling the FBI she had been cheated out of $3.5 million in deals brokered by Jefferson. The jury saw videotape of Mody handing over a suitcase filled with $100,000 cash outside an Arlington hotel. Most of that money was recovered from the freezer.

The defense argued that Jefferson was acting as a private business consultant in brokering the deals and his actions did not constitute bribery.

New Orleans voters had long been loyal to Jefferson, who in 1991 became Louisiana's first African-American congressman since Reconstruction. He rose from the poverty of the Louisiana Delta parishes to prominence as a street-savvy political tactician.[/b]

He was re-elected in 2006 even after news of the bribery scandal broke but was indicted and then lost to Republican attorney Anh "Joseph" Cao this past December.